Starcraft II beta: I get destroyed

Partially due to my upbringing as a console gamer and partially due to my general laziness in regard to keeping my PC upgraded, my experience with Starcraft is a bit…limited. I finally got around to playing the original in college, which means I beat it about around eight years after it was released. And since eight years is a bit of a steep learning curve to climb, I never played a match online or against any of my friends (the concept of mercy is foreign to them).

Enter the Starcraft II beta.

I could have reloaded the original on my new computer, or taken the time to re-familiarize myself with the controls, but due to what I can only assume is deep-seated self-loathing, I decided to jump right into the fray. And considering I didn’t even bother to use a mouse and stuck with my laptop’s touchpad, I was definitely setting myself for destruction. Oh, and I chose Terrans, so yeah, I expected to get Zerg-rushed out of existence within five minutes.

My opponent also chose Terran, so I least could cross “eaten by Zerglings” off my possible deathlist. And when my rival sent me a “Don’t own me too hard” message to kick off the match, I actually thought I might have a chance. Three Thors, three Battlecruisers and 15 minutes later, that dream crashed to the ground. My handful of Marines and Siege Tanks didn’t stand a chance and were slaughtered mercifully quick.

After a single match (plus a short round with the AI on “very easy” to lift my spirits), I can’t tell much of a difference between the original and SCII. I’m thinking for Starcraft fans, that’s a good thing. I’m definitely still looking forward to the campaigns, and my adventurous/masochistic spirit hasn’t been entirely crushed yet, so I’ll still be looking for some matches online.

5 Responses

Hang in there, Mike. Online SC can be brutal (I haven’t played SC II yet, but that’s how it was in the 1st one). It’s easy to tech up against the computer, but a lot of times in online play, you’re #1 priority is getting troops out. Troops, troops, and more troops. Obviously, there’s a lot more factors to consider (like recon, countering his troop choices, and map control), but the biggest problem people run into is simply not getting enough troops out. I played a lot of Starcraft, but was never all that “great”. I’ll probably play less of it this time, and be even worse, but I’ll still play it. I’m glad that they’re putting a (supposedly) good matchmaking system in, to keep players playing against a similiar skilled opponent.

The screenshot looks pretty much like the original. Like you said, that’s probably what they want – “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

My problem with SC and any game like that is that I like to watch the destruction my forces are handing out, so I stop paying attention to building new troops and ships to replace the ones getting killed and usually end up losing.

The beta’s been a lot of fun and like you, I get destroyed by people online. Destroyed to the point where it’s not fun (usually because most of the people I get paired up with start telling me all sorts of unsavory details about all manner of subjects) so I stick to the ai for the time being. I hope sometime down the road Blizzard will introduce higher levels of AI difficulty.

I also hope all the people who made those great custom RPGs for the first SC will be able to go even further with the SC2 map editor and continue to make some amazing maps for those of us not into the whole player vs player type of map.